Development planning for your team to set them up for success in 2021
The past year has been like no other for organisations with the global Covid pandemic and the uncertainty that it has brought to businesses and life. To be set up for success in 2021, it is important that employees can shift their mindset from just surviving each week to truly thriving.
To achieve this, key people and culture processes need to keep happening! One of the key people processes that may have been overlooked in 2020 is development and career planning discussions.
With the start of a new year it is a good time to re-visit development plans with your team. This should be an ongoing conversation, not a document that you dust off once a year to tick the box. Employees really need to own their development plan with their managers coaching, input and support. You want your employees to know what career progression opportunities are available, so documenting and regularly discussing this will help facilitate their career progression. Employee development plans help address future business needs and also succession planning.
Why have development plans?
Most people are motivated by self-development. If self-development is aligned to the company’s goals, this helps to build employee motivation and engagement for your business. If you have an effective development planning process both employers and employees will benefit.
For employers, spending the time and effort on employee development throughout the year can have a financial impact to your business, as an effective process can save you time and money on recruiting, inducting and training. It also gives you valuable data to feed into your talent and successful planning processes. Meaningful and realistic development and career plans will help to retain your top talent as they have a clear understanding of their career path and opportunities.
According to a Deloitte survey, more than two-thirds of millennials believe that it is management’s job to provide them with accelerated development opportunities in order for them to stay. This highlights that this is an essential step to the manager employee partnership.
Employees want to learn and grow within an organisation and an effective development plan supports this. Focusing on career development is one way to positively impact employee engagement levels. They will feel more engaged if they believe that their employer is focused and committed to their growth.
One of the main reasons employees resign from their role is because of the lack of career progression. Defining career paths and having two-way realistic development and career planning conversations are ways to reduce this reason for leaving.
Steps to an effective development plan
Many employees have a career and development plan, but it isn’t meaningful or realistic. Achieving a successful employee career and development plan can be broken down into a few steps;
Consider and reflect on the business priorities and individual development areas
Discuss and define SMART development goals
Managers realistically assess their employees’ potential for career progression and that the plan reflects this
Follow-up and revisit this plan throughout the year, remain flexible and priorities and needs can change
Looking to unite your team? Reach out.
Whiteark is not your average consulting firm, we have first-hand experience in delivering transformation programs for private equity and other organisations with a focus on people just as much as financial outcomes.
We understand that execution is the hardest part, and so we roll our sleeves up and work with you to ensure we can deliver the required outcomes for the business. Our co-founders have a combined experience of over 50 years’ working as Executives in organisations delivering outcomes for shareholders. Reach out for a no obligation conversation on how we can help you. Contact us on whiteark@whiteark.com.au
Article by Phoebe Reid
